


Wouldn't Dream of It

by Sarah_Sandwich



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Harley Keener as Iron Lad, Harley Keener-centric, Past Domestic Violence, harley pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29154159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_Sandwich/pseuds/Sarah_Sandwich
Summary: Harley gets slimed during an alien attack and when he passes out he is forced to confront some old memories and what they mean about his mom.
Relationships: Harley Keener/Peter Parker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 73





	Wouldn't Dream of It

There’s nothing he can do.

His faceplate is still up from a moment ago when he was trying to convince a trio of terrified kids to move from the playground tunnel to the school when Tony screams over the coms.

_“Harley, look out!”_

He pivots, repulsor raised defensively, and fires on instinct at the blobby purple alien as it reaches for him, not a foot away. The blast tears through it just as Peter swings in, planting his feet against its torso and kicking it several yards away as its innards explode over both of them. He gets a face-full of it—wet and sticky and putrid.

There’s nothing he can do.

“Shit,” he says, speech already slurring as he tries to wipe his face with clumsy metal fingers.

“He’s contaminated,” Peter says, voice high. “Harley got gooed.”

His knees give out and Peter catches him by the elbows and lowers him down to the weird spongy playground blacktop.

“I’m pinned,” Tony shouts. “I can’t get there. Cap!”

“Widow, you’re closest,” Steve says, tone calm and clear.

“My hands are a little full,” she pants. She grunts and a sickening squelch carries over the commlink.

“I’m on my way,” Sam says. “ETA 90 seconds. Keep him awake, Webs.”

“If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s making sure he gets very little sleep,” Peter chirps cheerily, but the hand gripping his shoulder to keep him upright is painfully tight.

Everyone groans over the comm and they click off one by one, refocusing on their immediate surroundings and containing the mid-afternoon alien invasion.

His limbs feel like tree trunks, heavy and club-like. His chin dips towards his chest.

“Hey,” Peter says, shaking him. “None of that or I’ll have to resort to desperate measures and my rep is bad enough without adding public indecency to the list… again.”

“Kids,” Harley says, nearly biting his tongue. He can’t feel his face.

“Huh?”

He tips his chin back and rolls his eyes up to the tunnel where a pale wide-eyed face peers down at him from the plastic window.

Peter follows his gaze and curses.

“Gotta get ‘em school. Was tryin’.”

Peter shakes him again and only then does he realize his eyes drifted shut.

“Harley, just hang on. Sam will be here and then—,”

“Frin’ly neighborhood Spider-Man,” he drawls as clearly as he can manage, lolling his head to the side to look Peter’s mask in the face. “‘S you. ‘M be fine. Gotta… kids.”

Peter curses again. “I’ll be back in fifteen seconds. Don’t you dare pass out while I’m helping them.”

“W’dn’t dre’m ‘f it, sweeth’rt.”

Peter jostles him one more time as though to remind him to stay awake then springs to his feet and urges the kids out of the tunnel. They file out immediately, little twerps. Kids freaking love Spider-Man.

Counting seconds must be pretty similar to counting sheep because Harley only makes it to eight before everything goes black.

~*~

When he wakes, his armor is gone and he’s standing in the open field next to his house in Rose Hill, Tennessee. The sun is blazing overhead and the grass whips around his calves in the wind but he doesn’t feel it.

“What in the h—,” He turns, taking in the house and his heart jumps into his throat.

His dad’s truck is in the driveway.

It’s an old blue pickup, rusting over the wheel wells, the bumper replaced with a two by four wood plank after that time he hit a deer and they didn’t have the money to replace it. It looks just like it did last time he saw it. Peach air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror and everything.

He’s halfway to the front door before he realizes he’s moving. Wait, he’s _not_ moving. His legs are motionless but the earth is rotating under him, bringing the house to him. He flinches as the door zooms at his face but a moment later he’s in the kitchen and the world is still again.

“Macy!” A voice bellows from the mudroom. “Why in the hell’s my good socket set scattered all over the damn yard?”

There’s a clatter on the stairs and his mother hurries across the room, sallow-faced and somehow appearing older than last time he saw her. “Sorry, hun. You know how Harley likes to play mechanic. I told him to pick up after—,”

There’s an awful _thwack_ followed by a gasp of pain and Harley’s in the next room in an instant. His dad is standing there, arm still raised, socket wrench in hand and his mom is on the ground clutching her bleeding cheek, face turned down to the floor.

“Ma?” he asks. He reaches out to touch her but he phases right through her back.

“Dammit, woman! How many times I gotta tell you these tools is how we eat! If you keep lettin’ that little brat lose all my shit then how’re we gonna live, huh?”

“You _bastard,"_ Harley snarls.

“I’m sorry,” his ma says in a soft voice he’s never heard from her before. His mama is strong and sure and if she’s got an opinion she’ll let you know it. This isn’t right. Nothing about this is right.

That’s when he catches sight of the pale freckled face framed in the cat door, staring wide-eyed at the blood dripping onto the linoleum. The memory hits him like a truck. He _remembers_ this. It was only a few days before his dad left and never came back. He remembers what happens next.

“Keep your hands off of her!” he screams a moment before his dad moves.

His dad reaches down for mama’s hair and he lunges at him, yelling as he shoves his shoulders only to tumble straight through him, and tumble, and tumble, and tumble.

He lands face down on nothing. It’s a bed, neatly made with a worn red quilt and two plump white pillows but it feels like nothing. He runs his hands over the blanket and nothing. He doesn’t feel anything.

He gets to his feet and looks around but he doesn’t recognize this place. There are dolls with ceramic faces and pristine bonnets lined up on a shelf next to the door. An old boxy sewing machine sits atop a table in the corner, a stack of paisley fabrics folded beside it. A lamp on the bedside table is the only light in the room, casting everything in a soft yellow glow.

There’s a lump under the blanket and a heap of dark brown hair poking out. Abbie?

Somewhere below his feet a door opens and closes and he hears a voice—old, weathered, safe.

He sinks through the floorboards and touches down gently beside himself. He’s young, his hair still light and fair like it was before it darkened in his teen years. Cheeks round and freckled, eyes serious as he gripes a red crayon in his fist and moves it steadily back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It’s nothing. A shapeless blob, a… puddle.

He flinches back.

“You sure you don’t want to stay another night?” that old voice asks from the room behind him.

He turns and he’s in the room beside an old woman he only vaguely remembers. Deep purple blotches under paper-thin skin on kind hands that smooth his mother’s wind-swept hair out of red-rimmed eyes.

“Dr. Reeves says returning to our routine will help the kids adjust.”

Unsurprised, the older woman nods and holds out her arms for a hug. She closes them around Mama, tucking her close, and then in that old raspy voice, barely audible in the silent house, save for the scratching of a crayon in the next room, she whispers, “I know what you did Macy Keener.”

Mama sucks in a startled breath and pulls back, eyes wide and fearful, but chin tipped up high and defiant.

She smiles and puts a hand on Mama’s good cheek. The other one is all scabbed over. “None of that now. I been where you’re headed and I walked your path. With my rat bastard of a son off in the wind, you and these kids are the only family I got left. You come by any time you need, you hear? Any time.”

“Thank you,” ma whispers, eyes swimming. “Thank you.”

Are they saying…

“Mama?” he whispers.

He reaches for her but before he can connect, she and Gramma Keener flicker away. The house melts around him and he’s in the middle of a pond. The big one on the southern edge of their property, surrounded by trees except for a little dirt path just wide enough for a pickup to squeeze through. He’s only been here once and Mama made him promise never again. That was fine with him considering the smell of this one and the little one being so much closer to the house and all.

His eyes light upon an old moldering two by four, half in the water, algae creeping up its length like it’s been there for years. Beside it in the muck is a peach air freshener, sun-bleached and filthy.

The world tilts and everything goes white

“There he is.”

He screws his eyes shut against the harsh white light and flinches when someone touches his wrist.

“Figures you’d find a way to sleep through clean-up detail.”

He forces his eyes open and squints past the glare into familiar warm brown eyes.

“Pete?” he manages, his tongue fat and clumsy between his teeth.

“Yes, princess?”

“‘M I awake?”

“God, I hope so. It’d be kinda weird if I was having a conversation with your unconscious body. Getting caught doing that twice in one day isn’t a good look.”

He reaches out and his fingers connect with the soft cotton of Peter’s t-shirt. Swamped with relief, he relaxes against the bed and drops his forearm over his eyes. “Weird dream,” he says. “What was that stuff?”

“Some kind of defense mechanism to incapacitate attackers while the rest of them kill you off. Bruce thinks there are pheromones in it that alert the rest of the colony, like how dead ants do so they can collect the body, only these guys use it for vengeance and murder.”

“That’s fucked.”

“What’s _fucked,”_ Peter says sharply, “is that we got swarmed right after you passed out like you _promised you wouldn’t._ Sam could barely get you out of there.”

He takes Peter’s hand and kisses his knuckles. Looking up through his eyelashes, lips against his skin he says, “Honey, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

Peter narrows his eyes at him, lips pursed unhappily, but he doesn’t pull away. “You suck,” he finally says. “I’m making a list and you’re going to do all the things.”

“I’ll do five things.”

“Ten.”

“Six.”

“Nine.”

“Seven.”

“Eight.”

“Eight _and_ you’ll wash my suit.”

He wrinkles his nose. “What if I get pheromoned again?”

“I advise you don’t.”

He cracks a smile. “You drive a hard bargain, Parker, but fine. I’ll do your list and wash your suit if it means you quit being a sulky little brat.”

Peter leans in and kisses him long and slow. He pulls back and sweetly says, “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.” Then kisses him again, just a light peck before backing up towards the attached bathroom. “I’m gonna shower and then I’m putting together that list.”

“Hold on, did you mean you wouldn’t dream of being a brat or—,”

He shuts the door.

Harley sighs. Great. He’s going to be like that.

He grabs his Stark phone off the side table and spins in between his hands, deep in thought. Those weren’t dreams. He knows they weren’t because he remembers. That was all locked in his head and something about that funky alien gunk made him relive it and _really_ remember. As an adult, he picked up on things he didn’t when he was a kid. Things he can’t just ignore.

Before he can think himself out of it, he pulls up his ma’s number and hits call.

“Howdy sugar bear, been a while since you found the time to call your ma. What’s the occasion?”

Her voice is how it always is. No terrified whisper. Not a single warble or tremble. Warm. Dependable. Loving. Firm.

“Mama?” he asks. He would hate how young he sounds under any other circumstances but not this time.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” she asks, tone losing its playful air. “I saw that alien mumbo jumbo on the news. You didn’t get caught up in that, did you?”

“I’m fine. That’s not— I called about… I called about something else.”

She huffs out a breath and her tone turns good-humored again. “Well, spit it out, sweetheart. Before I lose another inch to all this gray hair you’ve been giving me, if you think you can manage it.”

He smiles but it fades quickly. “Is there anything…” He bites his lip. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Maybe their ghosts should stay in the past.

“Baby, please just tell me what’s wrong. I’ll be dwellin’ on it all day if you don’t. You know how I get.”

He chuckles. He knows because he’s the same way. He gets it from her.

“I just wanted to let you know I love you and—,”

“Are you dying? You _did_ get tangled with them aliens! I’m gonna rip that Tony Stark a new asshole for—,”

“Ma, I’m fine! Just play along, please.”

She huffs and there’s a rustling of fabric before she says, “Fine. I’m listenin’. What’re you sayin’, Harley?”

“I’m sayin’ I _love you_ and if there’s anything you regret or feel guilty about or question if you made the right call, _don’t._ Okay? Don’t. I think considering everything, it all turned out the best it could and… Well, I just wanted you to know what I thought.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. So long he checks to make sure the call is still connected.

“I love you too, baby,” she finally says, voice choked. “You know I’d do anything for you and your sister.”

He smiles. “I know, ma. I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr @sarah-sandwich!


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